by Keith Matheny
August 13, 2019
The Michigan Department of Environmental Quality agreed last year to participate in a web meeting with an applicant for a controversial, open-pit mine in the Upper Peninsula, specifically to avoid creating a public record out of information the applicant wanted to show the agency.
Mining helped to build the economy of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, but it also has courted controversy for its environmental and cultural impact.
Miners pose with lunch pails in hand on a pile of “poor rock” (waste rock) outside of the Tamarack mineshaft, Photo by Keweenaw National Historical Park Archives, Jack Foster Collection via wikimedia.org (Public Domain)
Canadian company Aquila Resources’ Back Forty Mine has resurfaced long-standing disputes on how to reconcile the immediate economic needs of a community with the potential, long-term impacts mines and their waste leave on the land.
A significant point of concern among some residents and the Menominee Indian Tribe of Wisconsin is how Aquila plans to handle the inevitable waste material that will be produced during the mine’s operation.
Separating zinc and gold deposits from sulfide rock requires complex chemical interactions that ultimately end up as tailings: a combination of waste rock, water and toxic chemicals such as cyanide and arsenic.
Few and far between are the opportunities to leverage 10 minutes of our time into a major win for the common good. This is one of those crucial moments. A key public comment period on the design of Aquila Resource’s Back 40 Mine’s tailings containment dam closes on July 5.
Alert citizens are warning us that an ill-advised proposal for a massive metallic sulfide gold mine located on the banks of the Menominee River, an important tributary of Lake Michigan, would bring intolerable and long lasting risks.
Dear Editor,
Aquila’s paid ad on April 27 in the EagleHerald boldly states that the public need not be concerned about water pollution from the Back Forty project because state and federal regulatory agencies have determined that the conditions in Aquila’s water discharge permit will protect groundwater and surface water.
This conclusion will undoubtedly come as a shock to the Water Resources Division (WRD) of the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality (MDEQ). In the WRD’s Finding of Fact and Conclusion of Law (April 30, 2018) they concluded that “the project does not demonstrate that the activities will be protective of water quality in perpetuity. The management and onsite disposal of waste material has not demonstrated that constituents from the material will be contained on the site, in the manner in which they are disposed.”
The WRD further determined, “that these materials will be transported through groundwater and discharge at the land and water interface, resulting in an adverse impact to the resource. With the data available to the WRD, this impact is foreseeable and will result in a long-term degradation of the aquatic resources on and off the project site.”
After reviewing Aquila’s wetland permit application the WRD concluded that a permit should not be issued. Despite the WRD’s extensive objections, the director of MDEQ issued Aquila’s wetland permit in June 2018. Despite repeated requests from the public and environmental groups, the MDEQ has not provided an explanation of why the agency ignored the scientific and legal objections of their own agency staff.
This obviously flawed permit process is now being challenged in a contested case hearing before an administrative law judge. The plaintiffs in the contested case include the Menominee Indian Tribe of Wisconsin, the Coalition to SAVE the Menominee River Inc. and Tom Boerner, a private landowner.
Al Gedicks
Executive Secretary of the Wisconsin Resources Protection Council, La Crosse, Wis.
Dear Editor,
How much can we take with industrial pollution destroying our water ways and the health of our people? Are they that selfish that all they care about is making themselves rich and not protecting the welfare of the people and the generations that will pay? They don’t care about the generations that will suffer from their negligence.
Are we only focused on ourselves now and not what happens years down the road? We need to step up to the plate and get our heads out of our keisters.
Aquila Resources, a Canadian Exploration company, says that everything is taken care of. Let me ask how can even one permit be issued when they don’t have a plan for a disaster. How would you stop a spill from going into the river? We the people have to say no to their contingency plan of disaster.
Aquila says they will monitor the mine after the closure if it goes through, but for how long? The duration of the earth with a hole 850-feet deep filled with toxins and acid mine drainage will never go away. It will be here for eternity.
How can we let this happen to the second biggest tributary to the Great Lakes? Aquila says it will be safe to the environment and the water when there has never been one open-pit metallic sulfide mine in that world that has not failed.
So why is the Menominee River rated one of 10 of the most endangered rivers in the U.S., according to a National Geographic in 2017.
Go back to Canada and put one up and prove yourself first.
Let’s step up and protect the generations to come and leave it better that we have now. So get your head out of your keister.
Jeffery J. Budish
Peshtigo
October 24, 2018
Dear WRPC Member and Friends of the Menominee River,
Aquila Resources needs to convince its investors that the Back Forty project is moving forward in order to raise the pre-production capital cost, estimated at $294 million. Aquila has celebrated Michigan Department of Environmental Quality (MDEQ)’s issuance of a controversial wetland permit while downplaying the 28 pages of special conditions attached to the permit because of serious hydrological concerns that were overlooked in Aquila’s incomplete application.
July 5, 2018
Dear WRPC Member and Friends of the Menominee River,
On June 4, 2018, the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality (MDEQ) issued the final required permit for Aquila’s controversial Back Forty open-pit sulfide mine next to the Menominee River on the Michigan-Wisconsin border. Environmental groups and the Menominee Indian Tribe were outraged at the unwarranted approval and are calling on DEQ Director C. Heidi Grether to explain her decision.
STEPHENSON, MI — Environmental groups are crying foul over Monday’s decision by the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) to approve the Aquila Back Forty Wetland Permit. In a joint statement, the Mining Action Group (MAG) of the Upper Peninsula Environmental Coalition (UPEC), the Front 40 Environmental Fight, and numerous regional environmental groups say they are outraged by the unwarranted approval and are calling on DEQ Director to explain her decision.
“This smells rotten. Director Grether’s approval of the Aquila Back Forty Wetland permit was a political act, directly contradicting the recommendation of DEQ’s own Water Resources Division (WRD). This permit is inconsistent with the Clean Water Act,” said Kathleen Heideman of the Mining Action Group.
May 10, 2018
Dear WRPC Member and Friends of the Menominee River,
On May 3, 2018, in a major reversal of their previous recommendation to reject Aquila’s wetland permit (letter of March 8, 2018) for the Back Forty project, the EPA informed Michigan’s Department of Environmental Quality (MDEQ) that “we believe that there is a ready pathway for the resolution of EPA’s remaining objections through MDEQ’S inclusion of specific conditions in a final permit issued by June 6, 2018.”
If you’re read our article from the Fall 2017 Green American, “The Back Forty Mine: Is It the Next Standing Rock?”, you’re likely familiar with what’s going on in Upper Michigan. Briefly, Aquila Resources, a Toronto-based company, is trying to site a sulfide mine 150 feet from the banks of the Menominee River.
by Tracy Fernandez Rysavy
The border lands between the North Woods of northeastern Wisconsin and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan historically haven’t been a hotbed of environmental activism. The region, populated largely by farming and middle- or working-class families, trends staunchly conservative in states that toggle between red and blue from election to election. People kayak and fish in the summer, ski and snowmobile in the winter, and hunt deer and duck when the law permits them to do so. They don’t attend protests.
